1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a flash apparatus using a semiconductor laser device, a camera provided with the flash apparatus, a semiconductor laser device used in the flash apparatus, and a method of manufacturing the semiconductor laser device.
2. Conventional Art
Conventionally, halogen lamps and xenon tubes have been used as light sources in flash apparatuses used in test equipments and cameras. In such flash apparatuses, a capacitor is precharged. By discharging the capacitor once, the halogen lamp or xenon tube is made to emit light, whereby strong illumination light is obtained. However, with halogen lamps and xenon tubes, there have been problems in terms of the shortness of the lifespan, heat emission and high power consumption.
Thus, an illumination apparatus has been proposed that uses a light-emitting diode, whose power consumption is low and which has a long lifespan. This illumination apparatus eliminates unevenness of the illumination distribution resulting from each time the light-emitting diode is a point source of light (e.g., see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication (JP-A) No. 8-247929).
This illumination apparatus includes: a light reflector that is formed in a substantially rectangular parallelepiped shape, with light-reflecting surfaces being formed on four surfaces thereof excluding a light-incident surface and a light-emission surface at a position facing the light-incident surface; a plurality of light-emitting means whose optical axes are disposed facing the light-incident surface of the light reflector; light-diffusing means disposed at a position facing the light-emission surface of the light reflector; and a polarizing plate that changes the light leaving the light reflector and passing through the light-diffusing means to linearly polarized light.
However, when a light-emitting diode is used as the light source of an illumination apparatus as in the conventional technology described above, sometimes sufficient light output is not obtained.